News and Show Reports
CES: DTS Turns Home Theater Up to 11(.1)
By Chris Chiarella
2009-01-10 15:20:49

At their soundproof booth (more or less, the din of CES can be maddening) in the South Hall, DTS displayed their latest surround sound solutions for a variety of applications. One of the newest is DTS Surround Sensation UltraPC, an effective virtual surround solution for folks using their computers for any number of entertainment uses, at home or on the go.

They snuck me in for a series of music and movie demos involving headphones, 5.1- and 7.1-channel, but the capper was a still-experimental implementation of their signature Neo matrixing technology, this time in an 11.1 (not a typo) configuration. In addition to the standard 7.1 surround sound channels, DTS Neo uses ambience information in the mix to generate up to four additional height channels and that's what they played for us in Vegas with some multi-channel musical material.  It's so new in fact that it doesn't even have an official name yet, although at one point a DTS staffer referred to it as "Neo:X," while someone else suggested that it was like "turning your home theater up to 11."

New surround sound solutions for computer, car and home theater were shown all around the DTS booth.

The intended effect is too beef up the soundfield.  However they did it, it actually worked beautifully (to my ears), for a fuller, richer immersive surround effect.